Posts from 15th October 2007

15Oct 07

A trendy concept in marketing currently is occasion-based marketing – the idea is that rather than advertise the product, you advertise the occasion in which the product might be consumed. This is what the ad campaign for C2 – Carling’s low strength sorry, sorry, mid-strength 2% ABV lager – was based on. The quick pint in the lunch break. The swift quencher after a round of golf. The breathalyser-dodging bevvy – no, wait, that wasn’t one.

Anyway, it’s taken more than a while for the Publog Review Team to get its hands on a pint of draught C2, but the day has now arrived, courtesy of the Shipwright’s Arms near London Bridge. And we can exclusively reveal the real actual occasion when you might want to drink it:

There’s a sensibility here that’s completely vanished now from British pop. Death ballads aren’t exactly thick on the ground these days, but it’s the combination of death, jauntiness and theatre that’s really become alien – the drumbeats and penny-whistles, the big matey chorus, the sudden slowdown when Billy’s girl gets the (hardly unexpected) bad news. It’s a particular kind of sentimentality, absolutely unafraid of corn. You still find this kind of storytelling and broad emotional brushstrokes in country music sometimes (though from my skimpy knowledge of country, it’s declined even there) – and “Billy” might make an OK country song. There’s one line at least – “I heard she threw the letter away” – which could hit hard if it wasn’t so oversold. As it stands, “Billy” is an emotional non-starter – and it was probably ridiculous to most even in 1974, war or no war.

Time Machine

Featured Posts

21 Nov 2013
So here we are. The 32 qualifiers for the football World Cup have been decided, which means it’s time, once again, to get ready for the POP WORLD CUP. The point of this post is very simple. If you want to be a manager in the Pop World Cup, put your name in the comments […]

8 Aug 2019
Hello Popular readers! After sixteen years, and suffering from (as you’ll have noticed) a much slower posting rate, I’ve come to a decision. I’m going to crowdfund this project, using Patreon. HERE’S THE LINK. This coincides with me leaving my day job and going solo, which opens up a lot of spare time. But billable […]

1 Jan 2003
This article was the author’s working notes for his since published book “Adorno: A guide for the perplexed”, available from Waterstones, reputable booksellers, and Amazon Introduction, by Alex Thomson In many ways Adorno exemplifies the image problem faced by critical theory today. Adorno is not a sexy figure. He comes over in his writing as […]

11 Oct 2006
The discerning televisual fan will be aware of the vacuum currently residing in the schedules between the 7.30pm end of Hollyoaks First Look and the 9pm commencement of Ghost Whisperer. There are only so many times one can flick between Puff Daddy jiggling next to the Lead Pussycat on TMF and the startlingly abhorrent animated […]

1 Sep 2002
I don’t think much of the idea of ‘guilty pleasures’ but there’s guilt and there’s guilt, isn’t there? There’s guilt for something you might be doing wrong – breaking some invisible law of taste, maybe – and that guilt you can and should kick aside. But then there’s guilt for the things you have done, […]

20 Jul 2007
I semi-remember just two lines from the NME’s (Charlie Shaar Murray’s?) review of “Armed Forces” (secret unused title “Emotional Fascism”). One was that one of the other songs resembled ELP “jamming in the bottom of an oil drum”! The other — more germane to this post, as well as being true — is that “with […]

8 May 2018
Eight episodes are now up: Hazel Southwell and Mark Sinker talking through the story of the UK music press from two very different angles (bcz I am old and she is not), to help start the conversation around my upcoming book. pod 1: the pilot! pod 2: uh merry memories of the nme! pod 3: […]

27 Mar 2014
#774, 20th September 1997 Every Popular entry starts with the same question: why this record? This time it’s especially loud. “Candle In The Wind ‘97” is the highest-selling single of all time in the UK, almost 2 million clear of its nearest competitor. This is as big as pop gets. But “why?” might strike you […]